ELECTION: Getting the vote out a challenge for runoff

SAN ANGELO, Texas - With three seats left and six men standing in the runoff election, one question needs to be answered — how will they get San Angelo residents to go out and cast their votes again?

“There’s always a low turnout in local elections,” said Jack Barbour, chairman of the political science and philosophy department at Angelo State University. “It’s common in most municipalities. We’re not any different than anyone else.”

Like the 2009 city and runoff elections, City Clerk Alicia Ramirez estimated typical voter turnout during runoff elections to be about half the participation of city general elections.

With 8,060 of 51,550 registered voters, just more than 15 percent, who cast ballots in the May 11 election, that would put the runoff participation at an estimated 4,000 voters, about 8 percent.

Two council members are left in the mayoral race. Kendall Hirschfeld, who represented Single-Member District 5 for three years, led the race by more than 600 votes, about 8 percent. Facing him in the runoff is Dwain Morrison, a 10-year SMD 2 council veteran.

“I know I’m the underdog in this,” Morrison said. “I know I have an uphill battle, but giddyup.”

Well aware that the lower voter participation will hurt his numbers, Morrison said he wasn’t in this race to lose. His focus now is to get the message out to all San Angelo — that he wants to represent every taxpayer and advocate for the working class.

“This is democracy at its very basic level. My telephone is in the book, my email is on the city’s website. I am very accessible, and that’s the way I want it to be,” he said. “If somebody doesn’t like something I’m doing, they can drive up here and tell me. We’re all neighbors here.”

Morrison’s challenge is compounded by the voting performance of his strongest areas of support on San Angelo’s North Side: His pool of voter support is smaller than Hirschfeld’s, and on May 11 his voters in Single Member Districts 2 and 4 turned out in smaller numbers. Where Morrison won, he won big — nearly 60 percent in his home SMD2, and just over 50 percent in adjacent SMD4 — but those districts also have the smallest voting age population, the lowest proportion of registered voters, and had the lowest election turnout except for SMD3, which did not have a council contest on this ballot.

Hirschfeld did not win a majority in any of the single member districts, but with Paul Alexander out of the race his chances for picking up a substantial number of votes in SMD1, SMD5 and SMD6, more heavily populated areas with voters that appear more motivated, seem strong. Morrison did not poll higher than 26 percent in any of those districts.

Although the candidates’ latest campaign finance reports showed Hirschfeld outraised Morrison by a factor of five, Barbour said one of the advantages local grass-roots campaigns have over state and national campaigns is more person-to-person interaction with voters.

“You can see these people from the mayor and council,” he said. “You run into them at the market.”

Similarly, Hirschfeld said that his campaign strategy is simple — to let his character and his leadership experience speak for itself.

“It’s a continuation of me communicating who I am — my values, ethics, morals and what I view is important, which is leadership,” he said. “I’m taking everything one day at a time.”

Although he led the last round, Hirschfeld said the lower participation will hurt both of them — it just depends who decides to show up at the polls.

“It’s been going on forever,” Barbour said. “Participation is always highest in presidential years. It could be because local people are closer to us, and we don’t hold them in the same type of position as someone we see on TV.”

There are myriad reasons for lower participation in local elections, he said, but one common criticism is people don’t vote because adequate or correct information is not easily accessible.

Candidates do what they can to overcome that by reaching out to voters. Although he was defeated in the general elections, Paul Alexander, one of the 19 candidates in the May 11 election, invested heavily in social media, using Facebook and Twitter to stay in up-to-the-minute contact with voters, and found it to be a good way to get information out.

“I spent just over $1,000 just on social media,” he said. “I used social media to try to get to people who don’t ordinarily vote. I had access to about 16,000 people.”

Polling location information, including a directory to look up polling locations by individual voter street address, could be accessed online. With his large base of online followers, Alexander said, he was able to centralize the information with social media.

“With social media now, you can tweet or Facebook, as a candidate you can be connected,” Barbour said. “It addresses the younger people who are most savvy online. But they vote in the lowest numbers.”

While digital media is a good platform to disseminate information, he said, the challenge is to mobilize a group that doesn’t typically have a great deal of interest in local politics. The 18- to 24-year-old bracket normally votes in the smallest numbers, Barbour said, and older people typically vote in the largest numbers.

“But older people don’t have as much knowledge of the Internet,” he said, which can make voting difficult when the information is unclear or not easily accessible by other means.

Two other races on the runoff ballot will be for the remaining year of the unexpired terms representing SMD 1 and SMD 5, vacated by Alexander and Hirschfeld. Both contests had four candidates, and no one garnered a majority, so the top two vote-getters square off again June 15.

Running for SMD 1 are Trinidad Aguirre Jr. and Rodney Fleming. In the May 11 election Fleming led Aguirre by more than 100 votes out of a total of 1,892 ballots cast, putting him ahead by about 5.28 percent.

“It’s going to be a more hands-on approach this time, for folks to get to know me better,” Aguirre said. “It’s about the human touch, really.”

By touching people every day, Aguirre said his goal is to communicate that his leadership and managerial skills will equip him to lead San Angelo through the new opportunities from the influx of oil field-related activity.

For Fleming, the response he received from voters was a pleasant surprise, being new to the local political scene. Through daily interactions with people, Fleming said he relied a lot on guerrilla marketing, but saw little indication of its effectiveness until Election Day.

This runoff election will be his last shot — if he loses the runoff he will not run again, but if he wins he will keep going until the voters decide otherwise, he said.

“Trinidad is a great candidate to be running against,” Fleming said. “San Angelo is going to be lucky with either one of us.”

Both candidates received a strong showing, but both will have to rally their voters once more.

“I want to emphasize how important it is for people to go out and vote,” Fleming said. “If you care about something you need to show it.”

Vying for the SMD 5 seat are David McBride and H.R. “Winkie” Wardlaw III. Leading by about 50 votes out of the total of 1,532 votes, a little more than 3.26 percent, was Wardlaw.

In the May 11 election, Marty Self was elected to SMD 2, Don Vardeman was elected for the SMD 4 council position and Charlotte Farmer was re-elected to SMD 6. All three will be sworn in to two-year terms Tuesday.

Mobilizing voters is a challenge that will equalize the six remaining candidates in the June 15 race.

With too many variables to generalize why interest in local elections is lower, Barbour said city elections have an arguably greater impact on residents’ daily lives than do presidential elections.

“They’re things we face on a day-to-day basis,” he said, “From pot holes and traffic lights to people speeding in the city.”

Now more than ever, he said, San Angelo needs strong leadership to tackle its pressing water issues and imminent changes from oil field-related activity.

Just as El Paso, a larger and arguably more water-stricken city than San Angelo, managed to stretch its water resources through aggressive incentive programs and ordinances, the city’s local leadership holds the same power.

“This is something the local government could do,” Barbour said. “It directly affects local citizens.”

All registered voters in the city are eligible to cast ballots in the mayor race, whether they voted in the May 11 election or not, and voters who are registered in SMD 1 and 5 are eligible to vote for their council representative. The deadline to register for residents who were not registered for the May 11 election passed Wednesday.

If a voter requested a ballot for the runoff at the same time they applied for the May election, those ballots will be processed automatically. Voters who are unsure whether they have applied can contact the elections office to verify the status of a request. Applications for ballot by mail must be received by the elections office by June 7.

Early in-person voting will be held 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., June 3 to June 7 and from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. June 10 and 11 at five early voting locations:

Edd B. Keyes Building, 113 W. Beauregard Ave., second floor.

River Place Apartments, 501 S. Irene St.

Victory Christian Center, 1620 Sunset Drive.

Assembly of God Church, 1442 Edmund Blvd.

Plaza del Sol Apartments, 4359 Oak Grove Blvd.

For more information, contact the Tom Green County elections office at 325-659-6541.